The day the ambulance took his son, the father sat for a long time staring at the silent phone and didn’t call—it was fear of hearing the truth he already knew. He sat on a stool by the window, pressing his palms against his knees, listening as the siren echoed through the stairwell. The apartment was quiet, save for the hum of the old fridge, and the smell of fried potatoes he never finished mingled unpleasantly with the scent of heart medicine.
He was sixty-four. Neighbors said he was still young, but every morning he woke up with a heavy weight on his chest and the same question: why, ten years ago, did he slam the door in the face of an eight-year-old boy? The very same boy whose name he still bore—Artyom Sergeyevich Kovalev.
Back then, everything seemed simple and right. His wife had left a note in the kitchen: “I can’t live like this anymore; I’m taking our son.” He found them a week later, at her new lover’s place. Artyom stood in the doorway, clutching a soft toy, looking at his father with a caution no child should have. Sergey thought he saw judgment in those eyes. His mind churned with hurt, pride, and vodka. He hissed, “Don’t you dare come without asking.” The boy said something, tried to hug him—and Sergey, blinded, shoved him away and slammed the door.
For ten years, he lived like in a fog. Working, drinking, yelling at the TV. Sometimes he saw a boy in the yard who looked like Artyom and looked away. “Not mine anymore,” he told himself. It was easier to pretend he had no son at all than to admit he had lost him himself.
The first call came in November, while wet snow flew outside the window. The number was unfamiliar. Sergey wanted to hang up but somehow pressed the green button. A woman’s voice, hoarse from cigarettes: “Are you… Artyom Kovalev’s father?” It was a social worker. His wife had died suddenly—a stroke. Artyom was in a care home, sixteen years old. They needed documents, signatures. Then, as if routine, she asked: “Are you ready to take your son?”
That night he didn’t sleep. He smoked by the window, staring into the black courtyard. The words “take” and “ready” spun in his head. He remembered how Artyom fell asleep on his chest at three, how at five he asked why clouds had no home. And how, at eight, he stood at his door holding a toy. In the morning, he told the social worker, “I’ll think about it.” But he didn’t. Simply didn’t go.
A month later, another call. A different voice, a tired man’s: “I’m a doctor. Your son is with us in the hospital. He has leukemia. You’re his only close relative.” Sergey sat down on the floor, pressing the receiver to his cheek. The doctor calmly explained tests, treatment, chances. Money was needed, medicine was needed, support was needed. Someone to come and just sit beside him.
Sergey promised to come the next day. The next day he woke up, checked his blood pressure, remembered to collect his pension, stood in line at the post office, overheard women talking about buckwheat prices. The whole day got lost in trivialities. By evening, he decided, “Well, it didn’t work out. So, the day after tomorrow.” The day after tomorrow he didn’t come because for the first time in years he went on a bender. He drank for a week to drown out the voice in his head: “Dad, do clouds have a home?”
He ended up in the hospital by accident. He himself was rushed in with a mild heart attack. Lying on a stretcher in the corridor, staring at the gray ceiling, a nurse passed by and exchanged a look with another: “That’s the father of that boy with leukemia. Haven’t come even once.” He jerked his head, tried to speak, but only wheezed. Later, he kept begging the orderly, “Take me to him, to my son, even for a minute.” The orderly shrugged, “He’s on another floor, quarantine. And you can’t get up.”
On the third night, he couldn’t take it anymore. He pulled out the IV, got up holding the walls. Barefoot, in a hospital gown, he wandered through the empty corridor until he reached a glass door marked “Hematology. No Entry.” Behind the glass was darkness. Pressing his forehead to the cold glass, he whispered, “Artyom… son…” Silence answered back.
A ward assistant found him, brought him back to the ward, scolded him like a child. The same doctor came in the morning. He was silent for a long time, shuffling papers. Then he said, “He passed away last night. He waited for you a long time. Kept asking if you’d come. I told him—you would. For some reason, I wanted to believe you.” Sergey looked at his lips but couldn’t grasp the words. Only these echoed in his mind: “waited… come… wanted to believe.”
He was discharged a week later. He took a small bag from the morgue—an old player marked in marker ‘Artyom,’ a worn notebook, a couple of photos. In one, a thin boy about ten, wearing an oversized jacket, his eyes cautious but hopeful. On the back was a clumsy handwriting: “If Dad ever wants to find me.” Sergey traced the words with a finger as if touching a wound.
The funeral was quiet. A few people from the shelter, the social worker, the doctor. Sergey stood by the narrow coffin and cried for the first time in years, openly and like a child, without shame. He wanted to say a thousand words to his son, but only managed one: “Sorry.” The wooden lid closed with a dull thud, and for him, it was finally too late.
Now, every morning he wakes and first looks at the phone—the one he never called in time. In the evening, he goes to the cemetery, bringing cheap candies and apples—the ones little Artyom loved. He sits on a bench, tells his son about his day, how he fixed the faucet, how the neighbor’s grandchild was born.
One day, a boy about eight with tousled hair and the same squint as Artyom stopped beside him. “Grandpa, who are you here for?” he asked. Sergey swallowed, looked at the nameplate: “Artyom Sergeyevich Kovalev,” and answered, “For my son.” The boy nodded seriously, like an adult: “He probably misses you.” And ran off to his own.
Sergey watched him disappear beyond the cemetery gates, then turned to the cold slab and whispered, “Can you hear me, son? They say you miss me. Me too. Only I’ll spend my whole life missing—all the days when I could have come, but didn’t.” He realized the hardest part of his punishment wasn’t loneliness or old age. It was that he would live long enough to regret every yesterday.
